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Editorial

Editorial

Presents a point of view reflecting the company’s progressive values on an issue of public interest. Editorials are written by staff within the Star’s editorial board, which is independent of the newsroom.

Unfair UN terror list

Abousfian Abdelrazik lives under a cloud. Anyone who gives him a job risks being charged with breaking Canada’s anti-terror laws. His bank assets have been frozen. He can’t travel abroad.

That’s because the United States or some other country put him on the United Nations blacklist of people who are thought to have ties to Al Qaeda or other terrorists. He’s the only Canadian on it.

But security services and police in Canada and his native Sudan have cleared him of any criminal activity. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government asked the Security Council in 2007 to get him delisted, without success. Any of the 15 council members can veto such a move. Meanwhile, federal regulations that enforce the list mean that he is without a job, unable to travel and reliant on charity.

This is wrong, and Harper should make things right. Abdelrazik has petitioned the Federal Court to strike down Ottawa’s regulations as unconstitutional. But he shouldn’t have to wage this battle. Ottawa should stop complying blindly with a UN process that can target a Canadian citizen who has done no wrong, just because some other country harbours a suspicion. Harper should repeal the federal regulations. He’d have all-party support.

As in the Omar Khadr case, this looks like another example of Ottawa failing to go to bat for a Muslim citizen who runs into trouble.

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As Justice Russel Zinn of Federal Court rightly pointed out in a ruling last year when he ordered Ottawa to bring Abdelrazik home (after leaving him stranded in Sudan for six years), the UN watchlist process is “untenable under the principles of international human rights,” insofar as it falls short of natural justice and lacks procedural fairness. That pretty much says it all. Canada must protect its own.

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